Over the last couple of days, I’ve made the case that an overly direct and aggressive approach to recruiting may not produce the best results.

What’s the alternative? According to Adam Grant, a methodology that psychologists discovered several decades ago called motivational interviewing may be helpful.

In controlled trials, motivational interviewing has helped people to stop smoking, abusing drugs and alcohol, and gambling; to improve their diets and exercise; to overcome eating disorders; and to lose weight.

The approach has also motivated students to get a good night’s sleep; voters to reconsider their prejudices; and divorcing parents to reach settlements.

I’m not suggesting you attempt to enter into a therapeutic relationship with your recruiting prospects, but you can learn and apply some of the basic concepts that make motivational interviewing so effective.

Adam Grant suggests starting this way:

Instead of trying to force other people to change, you’re better off helping them find their own intrinsic motivation to change.

If they express a desire to change, you guide them toward a plan.

If you’d like to learn more about these techniques, here is a training video (15 minutes) describing the basic concepts of motivational interviewing.

The more you can understand the nature of change, the better you’ll be at recruiting.

Yesterday, we learned that forcing functions are a common tool used by high performers to help create positive outcomes.

According to Chris Sparks, there are several different types of forcing functions:

Deadlines. Deadlines can be imposed by an external person, organization, or yourself. The more trouble you get in for missing the deadline the more effective it will be.

Stakes. Increasing the stakes of failure will automatically raise your level of performance.

Because each person has unique strengths and weaknesses, you may respond to one type of forcing function better than another.

Or you may need to combine more than one of the forcing functions to create the needed behavior change.

Regardless of what combination works for you, forcing functions are helpful for aligning short and long-term incentives, creating a timeline to track progress, and giving last-minute bursts of motivation to get a project across the finish line.

If you’re not using them, you’re probably not reaching your potential.

There’s a common tool used by high performers seeking to improve their results called a forcing function.

A forcing function is a condition you place on yourself to help create or ‘force’ a positive outcome or action.

According to executive coach Chris Sparks, it’s the most effective way to change default behaviors causing poor results.

Forcing functions usually take the form of a commitment or a pre-scheduled event (i.e. function) which forces you to take action and produce a result.

Forcing functions act as buffers from distraction, making it easier to focus on the work that matters the most.

In essence, they are the catalysts that change your future behaviors by realigning your short-term incentives with your long-term goals.

Examples of a forcing function could be a morning meeting with an accountability partner, an appointment with a personal trainer, or a deadline where you’ll have to show your results to others on your team.

Since recruiting requires so much proactive effort with a low frequency of positive feedback, it’s a business process that benefits immensely from a forcing function mentality.

Without something tangible to focus short-term effort, most people fail to consistently execute the activities necessary to succeed.

And mediocre results are all they ever achieve.

Thank you to all those who took the time to participate in our Recruiting Practices Survey launched earlier this week.

Here are some of the things we learned:

1.  The most common office size of our readers is 50 – 100 agents.

10.  The challenge of Agent Recruiting was cited at 2 times the rate of next closest challenge (maybe that’s why you read Recruiting Insight everyday).

We’ll pull apart the data and comments in future Insights, but this should give you a quick picture of where you stand compared to your peers.

Over the past several months, we’ve been collecting survey data from our company’s clients and our marketing partners on agent, manager, and recruiting performance.

We primarily use this data to improve our services, build better tools, and focus more attention on the emerging needs of those who want to hone their recruiting performance.

Over the next week, I’ll be sharing some of the findings of these surveys directly with you. Hopefully, it will help you learn what your peers are thinking and reimagine what’s possible. So, let’s get started.

We asked a group of company owners, office leaders, and recruiters to rank from easiest to hardest the most common recruiting tasks.

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Onboarding New Agents. (Easiest)

Consistently Sourcing Enough High-Quality Prospects (Hardest)
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The top “pain points” related to this list were:

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Following-up and staying engaged with prospects.

Getting new agents productive quickly.

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Finding ways to do one or more of the difficult tasks better than your competitors will give you a competitive advantage in the recruiting process.

In a post from the archive, Dave Mashburn reminds us that leaders have struggled with being too busy for more than 2000 years.

In modern life, busyness is a distraction from living. Many dutifully fulfill their obligations but fail to do anything truly worthwhile.

‘Everyone hustles his life along and is troubled by a longing for the future and weariness of the present. But the man who organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day.’

Here’s some age old advice as you head into your weekend: Slow down and ground yourself to the most important values and objectives you have identified for your life.

And then help others to do the same.

Ghosting is a term normally associated with dating, but it’s recently made it into the vocabulary of most recruiters.

Why? Because according to findings from Dr. John Sullivan, it’s become a common part of the hiring process in all industries.

When a recruiting prospect inexplicably cuts off communication near the end of the hiring process, it’s expensive and frustrating.

Here are some suggestions from Dr. Sullivan to minimize recruitment ghosting:

Reinforce the hire. Remind and reinforce the many reasons why the new hire was initially attracted to the opportunity and why it was superior to their current situation.

Remind them that they are expected/needed. Let the new hire know you’ve scheduled activities to make them feel welcome and ensure that they fit into the team.

Get the new hire to end their job search. Take proactive actions to minimize the chances that the new hire will receive and accept another competing offer.

Reduce new job anxiety. Provide information covering common high-anxiety concerns. Increase interactions with the team to overcome fears that the new hire won’t fit within the group.

Remember, the hiring process doesn’t end until your new agent is productively working in their new position.

As we discussed yesterday, the quickest way to improve your employee brand is to optimize your company’s value proposition.

But why does a value proposition need to be frequently optimized?

Seth Godin recently offered this insight:

A project usually begins with clarity. The cause is just, the harm is real, the product is better. The work is worth doing, there’s an urgent need for change, it’s real.

The story that the group tells from the start is the right one, and anything else is a disappointing compromise, even if it stops leading to the action you sought in the first place.

Business conditions are constantly changing.

Unless the value you’re offering agents keeps pace, resonates, and inspires, you’ll fail to attract the talented agents needed to equip you to be successful.

There are two components that contribute to your employer brand—the market’s perception of your company and the unique value proposition you offer to those who join your team.

It’s hard to quickly modify the market’s perception of your brand because it organically emerged over time based on the experiences of your agents and consumers.

However, your organization’s value proposition can (and should) be frequently optimized to connect with the specific needs of your recruiting prospects.

To start optimizing, it’s helpful to start defining your unique value proposition by considering some common categories used by industry experts:

Company values and culture

Opportunities to perform community service

There is no company or team that is the best in every category. That’s impossible.

However, there are three or four areas where you probably surpass what your competitors are offering.

Your unique value proposition should focus on these advantages.

Take a few minutes to consider each category:  Where are you the best?
 

Almost everyone I coach struggles with consistently focusing their time, attention, and energy on their most important priorities.

It seems to be the bane of a real estate manager’s existence—the urgent screams so loud the most important proactive tasks get pushed to the bottom of the task list or remain undone.

Mark Johnson, CEO of JPAR Brokerage Texas, recently shared a quick exercise he does with his direct reports to help them stay focused.

Write down these four questions:

What should I stop doing?

What should I start doing?

What should I be doing less of?

What should I be doing more of?

For each question, jot down at least one item. For the stop/doing less questions, try to find more than one item.

If possible, do this exercise with your supervisor and/or the person coaching you. There should be a consensus on where you’re placing focus.

The secret of being a high-performing manger is doing your best work on your team’s highest priorities.

Sounds simple, but it’s only done by the select few who make it to the top of their profession.

In the 1994 film Wyatt Earp, Gene Hackman famously said those who were not related to him by blood were “just strangers.”

While this is not a great way to view your family and personal relationships, it is a helpful framework for recruiting.

Why?  Most of your recruiting contacts start out as strangers.

Your mother taught you to be wary of strangers, and your recruiting prospects are naturally wary of you.

At this stage, the goal is to build some basic awareness.

It’s first: I’ve heard of you.

And then: I’ve heard some good things about you.

Your recruiting communication should initially be focused on just this objective.

For example, you may want to send a quick text to someone you’re trying to recruit that says:

Your name came up in a conversation earlier this week.  I thought I’d take the opportunity to introduce myself.  I hope to have the opportunity to connect with you sometime soon.

High-performing recruiters and hiring managers are constantly building awareness with dozens of individuals.

Why?  The rest are just strangers.  And strangers never become hires.

Yesterday, we discussed the relationship bias model that helps new contacts drop their relational shields and engage in a meaningful professional dialog.

When a recruiter or hiring manager approaches a recruiting prospect, they’re subconsciously scanning to get the answers to two questions:

Can I trust you? and Can I respect you?

In addition to discovering these relational biases, the researchers learned something else important:

The questions have to be addressed in the right order.

While competence is highly valued, it can only be evaluated after trust is established.

First, they need to determine if you’re trustworthy, and then they’re open to learning if you’re respectable.

This may seem like a subtle distinction, but it makes a big difference in the success rate of early-stage conversations.

It also explains why referrals are so helpful in the recruiting process. One of the quickest ways to build trust is getting introduced by someone the prospect already trusts.

There will be time later in the discussion to demonstrate your competence, but without building some initial trust you’ll never have that opportunity.

Perhaps you remember the old Star Trek episodes where some unknown ship or life form is approaching the Starship Enterprise.

Spock and Mr. Sulu are desperately trying to figure out if this “thing” is a threat as the background music intensifies.

At just the last minute, Captain Kirk thunders out the order, “Shields up!” to protect the crew from an impending attack.

According to a group of Harvard researchers, humans do the exact same thing when they’re being approached by someone outside of their professional or social network.

They instinctively go into “shields-up” mode until they can determine if the person is safe.

Of course, your job as a hiring manager is to diffuse the perceived threat and get the person to lower their shields. Only then can meaningful dialog start to happen.

How do you do this? 

The researchers developed a relationship bias model that explained how individuals make judgments of other people and groups.

The model had two core trait dimensions and described how these judgments shape and motivate an individual’s social emotions, intentions, and behaviors.

In essence, they discovered what’s needed for someone to put their shields down and open a professional dialog.

What are the core traits?

Warmth: Can I trust you?

Competence: Can I respect you?

Your initial actions, behaviors, and questions must help your prospects quickly get answers to these critical questions.

Until they get these answers, the shields will remain up.

Like previous years, the Recruiting Insight writing and editing staff will be taking a two-week break from publishing as we enter the holiday season.

We’ll restart publishing on Monday, January 4th.

Thank you to all those who read, ask questions, and engage in the discussion. We learn much from this daily dialog, and we hope you do too.

If you feel like you need some Insight while we’re away, we’ve put together a few resources to tide you over until we return:

Try reading the Top 25 Insights. This page contains our most read posts from the year.

Try our new Random Insight Button. After you click into any post on the RecrutingInsight.us, you’ll see the “Random” button at the bottom of the post. Click this button and you’ll be served up some new Insight.

Check out our new Video Podcasts. This is a recent endeavor, but there are a few quick video episodes available. More to come next year.

I wish each of you a safe and joyous holiday season, and hope you’ll get the opportunity to recharge, as well.